Reviewing the Review: Monday Night Raw – June 9, 2014

The opening promo was the Authority stripping Daniel Bryan of the WWE Title. At the end of the day, this is the only thing you can really do. The guy can’t wrestle and hasn’t been able to for a month, so you have to take it away. Luckily for Bryan, he was only champion for a month so it’s hard to jump on him for the weak ratings. If nothing else maybe he’ll be seen as valuable for them going down without him. The MITB ladder match will now be for the title and Randy Orton has been added to the match because he’s Randy Orton. Seriously that’s pretty much what HHH said.

In the same promo, HHH talks about how Shield was told to evolve but only Seth Rollins actually listened to him. This led to the announcement of a six man tag later with Ambrose and Reigns teaming up with whomever they could find against the Wyatts. Why anyone expected anyone not named John Cena to be the third man is beyond me. Yeah it was predictable, but don’t act like it was some big disappointment just because you figured out who it was and they didn’t throw in a big curveball. That’s your fault for inventing some standard. If you don’t like Cena that’s one thing, but saying that him being the third man is a stupid idea shows that you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

Sheamus beat Bad News Barrett in a MITB qualifying match. Say it with me: Sheamus got beaten up and hit a Brogue Kick for the win out of nowhere. Typical hard hitting and not bad match between these two.

The Wyatts had a promo with Bray saying he was reborn. This was below their usual standard.

Lana showed off her legs while Rusev destroyed Ryder.

The Goldust Needs A Partner story continued with R-Truth. Something that I haven’t touched on in this story is Ryback and Axel picking up a lot of wins. It’s building them up as a new set of challengers and that’s something the Usos need right now. I love killing two birds with one stone. Later in the night Cody promised a new partner next week who will magnify Goldust’s greatness. I saw someone say it’s Sandow as Goldust and that’s probably the case…..unless Cody is now a Boliever. I have no idea why but that popped into my head as a possibility last week. I know it doesn’t make sense and I doubt it happens but it was there.

Summer Rae poured milk over Layla and it looked like male ejaculation. You know you were all thinking it.

Now we get to the real meat of the show: Shield attacked 3MB and got to talk about Rollins. Ambrose got right to the point by saying he was going to beat Rollins up very, very badly. This was a really simple promo but Ambrose was bleeding charisma out there and the whole thing worked really well.

Then we got to the one I really liked. Reigns spoke in a very calm and casual voice about how Seth committed the most horrible sin of them all. Roman is coming after all three of them and Rollins is his first target, followed by Orton and then HHH, presumably at Summerslam.

Reigns going through Evolution one by one is a great story and will make him look like a huge star. I loved how casual he was with this and acted like this was something he just had to deal with. Not a lot of people talk in a voice like that and it worked for him. He even capped it off with a Game of Thrones reference, because Roman Reigns is 29 years old and actually in tune with pop culture rather than referencing things that were big deals 15 years ago.

Damien Sandow dressed as a dancer to team with Fandango (accompanied by a still milky Layla for no logical reason) in a loss to the Usos. If there’s a point to this Sandow stuff, please feel free to get to it anytime.

Bo Dallas beat Xavier Woods in the usual Dallas formula.

Cesaro beat RVD to qualify for the ladder match. There’s really nothing to say here.

Cole had a sitdown interview with Rollins to explain why he did this. The explanation was that Rollins founded the Shield and didn’t like sharing the credit. That helps, but it really doesn’t answer why he joined Evolution. Shield has proven that they’re better than Evolution, so why would Rollins want to work with or under a leader that he’s defeated twice now? It would make more sense to have Rollins strike out on his own or start a new stable with lackeys of his own. Instead he’s arguably third fiddle in Evolution and lower than when this whole thing started. I still think there was no reason for this other than shock value but this helped.

Ambrose and Reigns ran in post interview but the Wyatts made the save, drawing out Cena for the obvious reveal.

Paige beat Alicia Fox again and Fox freaked out on Aksana for costing her the match. I’d like to point out again: I don’t care about stories involving crazy losers.

Jack Swagger got fired up by a slap from Zeb and beat Santino. I didn’t care the first 5 times they did this and I don’t care now. Swagger has needed a repackaging for about four years now, since he’s been the same character since roughly 2009.

The six man main event was fine and did a nice job of storytelling. Having Reigns and Ambrose finally beat the Wyatts in a six man in their first try without Rollins shows that he was the reason they couldn’t do it and adds to the story. Reigns tearing through everyone is going to be an awesome sight to see.

Last night’s Raw was a good example of having everything go so fast that I didn’t have time to complain about most of it. The matches were mostly short but the most part nothing was all that terrible. This show was about the main event scene and we got a lot of stuff added on to the big pay per view match. Also we got a preview of what’s coming for Reigns and that’s the most important thing for the future. Efficient but not a great show this week.

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